I met the man himself last week, in Reading at our Green Park wind turbine – David Cameron was in the ‘hood’ doing local political stuff and asked to have a closer look at our mill – so I showed him round. I’m glad I did.

We talked about the 1,000 homes the turbine can power every year and other bits and pieces, how often it doesn’t work (mere days per year) how much time we spend on maintenance (two days per year), that kind of stuff – a brief exploration of the myths of wind energy I guess. The lack of noise was one thing he remarked on, from the turbine I mean, the M4 is just awful there.

I took him into the machine itself – followed every step of the way by photographers and film crews and I could see he was so very used to that, his face and his body language were always just right (not like mine). This is no criticism just an observation, he’s always on camera after all. Hey maybe I should have had a shave…. Nah.

We talked briefly about the Tories idea to introduce Feed-in Tariffs to the UK – as an answer to the lack of Renewable Energy progress we’re all making. It’s the second time this week I’ve been asked how I think this might work (or not), the Guardian also asked, so I’m going to write a short piece on it – and blog it.

Basically I think it’s the right answer to the wrong question, but more later.

I mentioned (I just had to), more than once but always in context… :-), that planning was actually the only real problem for onshore wind – the only thing standing in the way of us hitting our targets. And I pointed out the anomaly that wind is the only major generating source whose planning decisions are made by District Councils. Oil, Gas, Coal and Nuclear decisions are made elsewhere, with a different outcome.

It’s easy enough to see how wind got to be in that situation, the planning system being designed for bigger concentrations of power before wind came along with its decentralised smaller scale nature – but it’s hard to see why wind has been left in this situation for so long. Except for the fact that it would take guts to change the system in the face of the hysterical NIMBY mob….

Don’t think I made any headway with that one – no politicians in the UK have the guts to tackle it in my opinion, but I don’t stop trying.

5 responses to “Hoodie Hugger meets Tree Hugger”

nommo

April 14, 2008 at 4:20 pm

Hmm… I have become quite bored of party politics – do you think there is really any difference between them these days Dale? They do seem to just chase around the Daily Mail readership, and steal each other’s policies… 😉

Is there a party worth voting for? I mean out of the bunch – who should we vote for if we want to see real positive change in the UK (like better planning regulations for homes AND turbines and the other big issues)??

Just curious, as I have only voted once and would like to use any future votes to support a concerted effort on the political front… I would tend to lean towards Green Party/LibDems, but I am still not sure who should get my vote.

I’m looking forward to your reasoning re FITs. I know at least one government (UK) adviser who feels the same, but I guess it depends what your target/goal is. If it’s getting things on as many rooftops as possible then FITs seem to be a good idea. If it’s getting as much distributed RE as possible and getting as many people as possible to think about their energy use then FITs may still be a good idea, as seems to have been the case at least in Germany.

What goal(s) should we be optimising for?

Rgds

Damon

BuggaLuggaHugga

April 15, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Dale, you mention decisions on Wind being made by district councils. If plans for a wind farm are of a certain scale do they get referred to a national planning authority?

Thanks for your comment (actually – thanks for everyone’s comments!) – I am the blog editor, although I won’t be ‘speaking for Dale’ I just wanted to draw your attention to his latest post, which answers your question regarding Dale’s views on Feed-in Tariffs…

@Nommo, I’m not into politics, and I get what you say about chasing Mail readers – being driven by the lowest common denominators are what tabloids and politics have in common. There’s no difference I can see in any of the parties on the crucial issue of planning, I don’t think even the greens break ranks there. Who was it who said ‘voting is for slaves’?

@Damon, I’ve posted the first part of my view on FITs – it’s aimed at the large scale sector. I think your point might relate to the domestic sector, where FITs are also suggested/being pushed. I’m going to post that second part in a day or so. I do agree with you though, maximising distributed generation should be one of our goals.
Cheers.

@Buggalugghugga (had fun typing that one in), you’re dead right, wind farms over 50 MW go through a process known as ‘section 36’ which means basically that the government makes the decision. Thing is 50 MW is a very big wind farm and so this route applies to just a few big sites (especially in space constrained England) – there is a huge potential in sites of under 50 MW – and these are the projects that also connect into the local distributions systems (grids) as opposed the national grid, which at 50 MW you start to have to do. I say that because it means smaller wind farms are more decentralised forms of power, generated closer to users and with less losses incurred – it’s a better way to do it. Cheers.

Zero Carbonista

This blog is about answers to the big questions - how will we keep the lights on, what kind of cars will we drive (will we drive?) and how will we feed ourselves - in a post oil world, and a world where we can't afford to keep burning things and throwing things away. Energy, Transport and Food are the three big issues.